


What we left behind

by Naladot



Category: 2PM (Band), K-pop, Wonder Girls
Genre: F/M, Past Relationship(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-04-02 01:38:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4040725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/Naladot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wonder Girls 2010 US tour. Life never does move forward in a straight line.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What we left behind

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to LJ in March 2014.

In the stretch of time before they take the stage in D.C., while the bass of the guys’ song rattles through the walls in the dark backstage, Yubin feels the past reel headlong into the present, a sudden closed loop. She is simultaneously twenty-one years old at the back of a small stage in a foreign country with a big, impossible dream dangling just in front of her—and she is nineteen, getting ready to perform on her very first broadcast with a chill sense of confidence settling into her stomach. 

Something comes back to her then, something her mother said once when they were living in California and she’d taken Yubin on yet another shopping trip. Her mother was at her most profound as she closed in on a sales rack at Nordstrom or Macy’s, advice punctuated by the _clack-clack-clack_ of clothes hangers against the rack.

“You can’t live in the past,” her mother had said, frowning at the slim pickings, “but you can’t escape it, either. Keep going and remember where you’ve been. Don’t lie to yourself.”

Yubin was young then, awkward and surly next to her mother’s poise, annoyed with the trite words. But in the way that mothers’ words have, they turn out to be true right now, as Yubin gets her microphone double-checked and the thrum of bass marches in time with the pounding of her heart.

As they move to go up on stage, the guys come rushing past them, smelling of performance sweat and stage lights. Taecyeon holds his hand up as she passes, and she slaps it on reflex. His fingers curl around hers slightly and stop her pace, swiveling her around on her heel. “Good luck,” he says, grin wide. Yubin gives him a look.

They take their places behind the curtain. It is dark, and she can only see the outlines of the other girls in line next to her. _Five_ , she counts mentally, _four, three, two_. . . She wipes the hand Taecyeon grabbed on the material of her skirt. _One_.

The spotlight flares around her.

 

 

“Here.”

Yubin looks up from the game she’s playing on her cellphone and sees Taecyeon holding out a cup of coffee. She sets her phone down in her lap and takes it, sipping it curiously as he sits down next to her. An employee at their gate talks to a few disgruntled passengers—their plane has yet to arrive and all that is visible beyond the windows is the empty space where it will be hooked up to the terminal. The coffee is a light latte with a hint of peppermint. She doesn’t know why he remembers these things.

“Thank you,” she says, too late for it to be anything but awkward. He nods rather than saying _you’re welcome_ , but she doesn’t question it too much. In the row of seats across from them, Sohee is giving Wooyoung a steady, annoyed glare while he teases her, and Chansung may have fallen asleep.

Taecyeon’s arm rests briefly on hers as he reaches for her cell phone. “What are you playing?” he asks, and starts to fiddle with the phone himself. She has to move her arm out from under his. A chill runs over her skin as she does so. The noises of the airport seem to grow louder and she chances a look at him. His expression is the impassive one she expected, but she knows him too well, knows when he’s trying to hide his thoughts by the hard line of his lips pressed together. She’s heard that he’s dating one of the girls from another company—Jessica, maybe—but she doesn’t ask because she doesn’t want to know. It’s better if she doesn’t know. 

She considers what she might say: _It’s all in the past. Let’s move on—let’s really move on, no more of this._ Except she can’t. A weight has pressed down onto her chest and she wishes she could unravel those knots of the past, because it still runs between them on days like this when it’s too easy to sit closely and call it platonic. But it’s better to let him think she’s forgotten, too, so she stays quiet, sipping at her coffee.

 

 

There are a lot of things she tries not to remember, relegating them to a past that should not touch her present. Before he was famous, it hadn’t seemed to matter too much. It comes back in fragments—legs tangled in sheets, cold air and rain coming through the window screen, laughing over she can’t remember what, promising him that fame would come and be great when it did. She tries not to remember that they were so very young, much younger than they’d thought of themselves. That a person can change completely in three years or less, and this is true of both of them. She tries not to remember that she’d once thought she might be in love, but never said it out loud. 

 

 

Their flight to New York gets cancelled. Sunye looks like she’s ready to talk her way onto a plane, fledgling English and all. Yeeun is worried but still goofing off with the boys. Sohee looks kind of bored, which could mean just about anything, and Hyerim looks twice as bewildered as usual. Taecyeon manages to get onto one last flight with one of their managers, so the last thing Yubin sees is his back as he disappears down a hallway, and yeah, that seems about right.

They make the New York concert, miraculously, and when it’s over the only thing Yubin wants to do is pull up a Korean drama on her laptop and crawl into bed, but the guys are all full of adrenaline after barely making that show, and somehow Yeeun talks her into roaming around with the rest of them. Yubin’s always been too willing to go with the flow.

The city is electric and alive and the boys have far too much energy for Yubin to do much but get pulled along, laughing at their antics, Yeeun and Taecyeon charging ahead. If it’s Yubin and Yeeun and Taecyeon, they’re a perfect trio. People think that it’s Yubin who balances out the other two’s crazy behavior, but Yubin knows it’s Yeeun who balances things out. Without her, they’re Yubin-and-Taecyeon. And that’s something else altogether.

They end up walking all the way to Grand Central Station, the boys crooning out strains of different Wonder Girls’ songs in embarrassing falsettos, and when they arrive there’s a moment as they’re going through the doors when she and Taecyeon are still outside, waiting, and he gives her this look.

“Are you mad at me?” he asks. 

Here’s the thing about Taecyeon—he is far, far smarter than anyone who takes his shirt off for a living has a right to be. So Yubin knows that this is more strategic than it seems. She meets his eyes, wind blowing her hair back out of her face, air too thick with city dust and memory for her to stick around and bear it.

She thinks about trying a little bit of transparency, even though a concert tour really isn’t the place to do it—then again, he’ll go back to Korea and his variety shows and endorsements and high-profile connections and she’ll be sticking it out in the American market, so it might not be as high-risk as it feels.

“Taec,” she says after a long moment. He’s still looking at her. In the corner of her eye she can see the others waving for them to hurry up from inside. She opens her mouth to say something else.

His eyebrows raise slightly and he smiles in a way that she hates, because it’s a little bit too genuine and vulnerable for her to stand it, and she knows he’s trying to act tough—and then he says, “Hey, come on. You dumped me,” with a laugh that makes it sound like he’s teasing her.

And then he goes inside. Yubin laughs in shock.

 

 

If you’re counting—and Yubin isn’t—it’s only been a year since she called things off. But it was sensible. It was necessary. She doesn’t regret it.

She also vows not to talk to Taecyeon for the rest of the concert tour, but breaks that vow in under an hour. Sweeping things under the rug is easier, anyway. And as it turns out, she doesn’t really like honesty all that well.

Once she sweeps things under the rug, though, the river runs its course. She and Taecyeon are alone at least as often as they’re not—which is saying something, given the small size of these theaters and the nature of concert preparation. She’d forgotten what it felt like, Yubin-and-Taecyeon. She wonders if he really is dating someone and doesn’t ask, so she can’t be held accountable for it. She doesn’t encourage him to flirt with her, but she doesn’t really discourage him, either. The hardest thing is ignoring Sohee’s all-knowing warning looks, but they’re all too busy for anything to count for much.

Still, she knows she shouldn’t end up where she does—sitting on the balcony of his hotel room one night, overlooking the pool and a parking lot. The night air is a bit chill and Taecyeon procures two beers from somewhere, which taste different from what they’d have in Korea, but somehow more appropriate. There aren’t any chairs on the balcony so they sit on the ground, staring out through slightly rusty bars, her shoulder pressed into his. It’s too habitual for it not to mean something, to bring back old, dusty memories that still stab her in the chest. But she doesn’t move.

“I bet you forgot all about me,” Taecyeon says, tipping his head back for the last of his beer. He looks down at her and grins. “Got yourself a Jonas brother, right?”

Yubin gives him a look. “A Jonas brother?”

He laughs at his own joke and shrugs. “Well, I forgot all about you, anyway.”

“Good,” Yubin says. “Then it’s mutual.”

They laugh but a breeze chills the air then, like a physical reminder that they’re getting a little too close to things they’re not talking about. Yubin starts to move away from him, but he stops her with a hand on her wrist. They both look at that for a moment, the large size of his hand, the slight form of her wrist, neither of them entirely sure what to make of it.

“I miss you,” he says, more earnestly than she likes him to be. She rakes her other hand back through her hair.

“Taec,” she says. They’re quiet for a moment.

“I wish,” he says, then trails off. He leans his head back against the wall. “I wish we could just put the past behind us, you know?”

She thinks she knows what he’s saying, and waits a moment before vocalizing it. “Forget it— _we_ —ever happened.”

He doesn’t say anything.

 

 

Here’s what Yubin doesn’t know—

In a few years neither of them will be dating anyone, and neither of them will be pursuing career goals as audacious as the ones they are now. They’ll start talking, staying up late into the night at her apartment or wandering the city or with their ears pressed into the phone while he’s in Japan. Talking will turn into dates. Dates will turn into a relationship more stable and serious than Yubin would have ever thought either of them capable of—but then, people can change entirely in three years or less.

But no one gets a window into the future. They only get the present.

And right then, Yubin kind of just wants to kick him where it hurts.

 

 

“Look,” she says with a sigh. She pulls her wrist away from his hand and stands up, leaning back against the railing so she can get a good look at him. “You can’t change the past. You can ignore it if you want. But you’ll just be lying to yourself.”

“You can’t be mad at me for trying to move on,” Taecyeon says. He stands up and he’s too tall, too much in her space even without moving forward. She turns away from him and faces the outside—the pool and parking lot and _America_ , and all of it is too much.

“I’m not mad at you,” she says.

“You sure?” he asks. He stands next to her, but far enough away that they’re not touching. She wants a do-over, or a chance to go back and relive the past. She wants to kiss him, or something. But she’s not that sort of girl, really. Stage image doesn’t count for much.

She settles for grasping his hand, just for a moment, her fingers pressed into his palm. “We both need to move on,” she says quietly.

He doesn’t say anything. So she leaves.

 

 

Their last few shows with the guys are in California. The landscape feels rich with Yubin’s memories, and she takes each stage fiery and alive. Maybe she’s moving on, too. 

The guys leave the hotel before the girls have to be out one morning, before Yubin has even woken up yet. Yeeun goes to see them off, though, and when she returns to the room she hands Yubin a sheet of paper. “Taecyeon wanted me to give you this,” she says with a shrug.

It’s a sheet of lined paper with a ragged edge, apparently torn hastily from a spiral notebook. Yubin unfolds it slowly, still half asleep, and squints at the cramped, scratched in handwriting.

_I know this is the kind of thing we never do,_ it reads, _because it’s cheesy and stupid but I think you always wanted me to write you notes like this and I never did, and I’m sorry for all the things I never did, and I’m sorry things didn’t work out, and I’m sorry we’re on opposite sides of the world, and I’m sorry that this whole American life thing is so hard for you, and I’m sorry I couldn’t help you. I hope you know that I loved you and I do love you and you’re my friend and nothing ever changes that. Please don’t be mad at me. Maybe we do need to move on but you’re right. Can’t pretend it never happened._

_So, past, present, and future Yubin—can we be friends?_

_Taecyeon_

She stares at it for a long moment. And then she laughs, and she can’t stop laughing.

“Are you all right?” Yeeun asks, bewildered. Yubin folds the note back up and holds it in her hands.

“Yeah,” she says. “Taecyeon’s dumb.”

 

 

_end._


End file.
